Definition of "proprietarian"

The quakers and proprietarians together have little weight. New Jersey shows a noble ardor. Is there any thing in the air or soil of New York unfriendly to the spirit of liberty?

1854, John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Works: with a life of the author, page 411

When Richard Peters reported to Penn on 2 October that the proprietarians had lost the election, he did not mention Franklin's supposed betrayal of Allen, Hamilton, and Chew.

2008, J. A. Leo Lemay, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 3: Soldier, Scientist, and Politician, 1748-1757, University of Pennsylvania Press, page 536

Although the proprietarians lost seats, the 1742 election opened a season of political détente between the warring factions. The governor finally got his lazaretto, and legislators even compromised on compensating Thomas Graeme, ...

2012, Simon Finger, The Contagious City: the politics of public health in early Philadelphia, Cornell University Press, page 50

The poor have been classified as the proletarians and the rich as the proprietarians on the Chinese mainland. In the Communist view all proletarians are good men and all proprietarians are bad men.

1974, Free China Review

This is because in the capitalist nations, most people are wealthy and are proprietarians; therefore, their social culture and social logic are established on the basis of the wealthy.

2017, Xu Xue Chun, Century Sentence: A Diary Written to God Accusing Against All of the World

The conversazioni are of all sorts, from the conversazioni of the rigid proprietarians, where people sit down to a kind of hopeless whist, at a soldo the point, and say nothing, to the conversazioni of the demimonde where they say any thing.

1883, William Dean Howells, Venetian Life, Leipzig: B. Tauschnitz, page 331

We could do just about as we very well pleased, so long as we did not hurt ourselves or others, and so long as we understood right from wrong. Indeed, we were disciplined by proprietarians.

1977, Eva Malott, Ada McPhilliamy, Dick Pence, Digging our roots, page 158